You know what’s great about fruit flies? Nothing.                       fig. 1 Fruit flies suck Nothing, that is, other than their benefit as a model organism for simple and fast transgenic experimentation — but who really cares about all that. Drosophila melanogaster are butts, so what if they could die? Well they can (vinegar and plastic-wrap), we don’t need […]

Coming soon to a backyard near you. At least, that’s the idea. We’re sure the technology will catch up if we give it enough prodding and throw an intern or two its way. And hey if not? There’s still lasers, sounds like a win/win to me. Wait we don’t get lasers either? This is really going […]

Hello, again. I’m Cort, the fly guy (I also do research with fruit flies) at Backyard Brains. Since the last time I posted I’ve made significant progress in my research! IT WORKS!!! In the above video what you’re seeing is one of the flies I’ve bred having its proboscis extension activated with an LED. Optogenetics works! Now […]

My name is Cort Thompson and I’m one of the incredibly privileged interns working at Backyard Brains this summer. I’m an undergraduate neuroscience student at Michigan State University and this summer I am working to bring the cutting edge technique of optogenetics to the classroom while also observing the courtship behaviors and gustatory system of […]